In an effort to maximize battery life on laptops, Microsoft Edge includes a feature called “Efficiency Mode.” When enabled, the browser actively monitors your open tabs. If you navigate away from a tab for a few minutes, Edge automatically throttles the CPU usage and memory allocation for that background tab to save power.
While this is great for extending battery life, it can cause severe problems for heavy web applications. If you are rendering a video on a cloud-based editor, exporting a massive dataset from an analytics dashboard, or streaming music from a web app, throttling the tab will instantly freeze the process or cause the audio to stutter.
To ensure your web apps run at maximum performance regardless of whether they are in focus, you should disable Efficiency Mode.
How to Turn Off Efficiency Mode
You can completely disable this performance throttling via the Edge settings menu.
- Open the Microsoft Edge browser.
- Click the three horizontal dots in the top-right corner.
- Select Settings from the drop-down menu.
- In the left-hand navigation sidebar, click on System and performance.
- Look for the section labeled “Optimize Performance.”
- You will see a toggle switch labeled Efficiency mode.
- Turn this toggle to the Off position.
Once disabled, Edge will treat every single open tab with equal priority, granting them full, unthrottled access to your computer’s CPU and RAM, ensuring your background tasks complete without interruption.